Mar 22 2017

Outlook 2016: Clear Email Address From Auto-Complete

Outlook will offer to auto complete recipient address if you have ever sent them a letter before. If you want to remove an address from Auto-Complete list or clear Auto-Complete list in Outlook 2016 follow these steps:

Removing an address from your auto-complete list

  1. In Outlook, click the New button to start composing a new email.
  2. In the To: field, start typing an email address.
  3. Using the up and down arrows on your keyboard, select the email address you would like to remove from the suggested contacts list. Press the Delete key on your keyboard or press X sign next to the address.

Outlook-2016-delete-single-email-address-from-AutoComplete Continue reading

Mar 09 2017

Manage updates settings in Windows Server 2016

Since Windows Server 2016 you will not find “Windows Update” section in Control Panel. Instead you can manage or enable/disable updates  in two ways: using sconfig or through Group policy.

Manage Windows Server 2016 updates with sconfig

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Feb 26 2017

Play a video in a Skype for Business meeting

play-video-in-skype-for-business-meetingPlaying a video in a Skype for Business conference might be not so straightforward task. The caveat is that sharing your videoplayer or browser with youtube will not be enough: video will be displayed choppy and participants will hear no audio. This is because the video will be transmitted not as a stream to each participant but as a set of slides and there is no way to transmit audio here.

How to play a video with sound in Skype for Business meeting? Insert the video into PowerPoint file and share PowerPoint in Skype for Business meeting! Here is how: Continue reading

Feb 17 2017

Skype for Business SQL Low RAM condition

skype-for-businessThere may be a situation when Skype for Business front end server despite of having enough memory performs very poorly and you can even see low memory errors in Event Log from SQL. In case the front end is hosted on virtual machine the first thing that has to be checked in such kind of scenario is MS SQL Server memory limits. These limits are set by Skype for Business Deployment Wizard at the moment of database installation and in case the virtual machine has dynamic RAM and amount of actual RAM was not maximum at the moment of deployment SQL Server memory limits could been set incorrectly. Continue reading

Feb 10 2017

Skype for Business, Asterisk and SIP REFER

Skype-For-Business-Asterisk-SIP-ReferIf you don’t use VoIP gateway that “officially” supported by Microsoft and Skype for Business you may experience troubles in some cases as those devices may not interpret correctly SIP Refer messages sent by Skype for Business Mediation Server. The problem I’ve experienced in my environment was that when you activate “Call me at” feature in Skype for Business mobile client calls were immediately dropped after you had picked up your phone. I’ve used Asterisk as VoIP gateway and Skype for Business uses it for all calls to PSTN and cell carriers. Continue reading

Feb 06 2017

Configure logrotate for Asterisk logfiles on CentOS

Asterisk PBXlogrotate is an utility specially designed for ease rotation of large numbers of log files. It allows automatic rotation, compression, removal, and mailing of log files. Each log file may be handled daily, weekly, monthly, or when it grows too large.

Normally, logrotate is run as a daily cron job. By default it lacks the configuration file for Asterisk logfiles. Here I’ll suggest an example but you may customize it based on your needs.

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Jan 25 2017

How to Disable Administrative Shares in Windows

Windows-disable-admin-sharesBy default, Windows creates some hidden shared folders – administrative shares. These folders are identified by a dollar sign ($) at the end of the share name and so they are hidden. Hidden shares are those that not listed when you look at the network shares on a computer in File Explorer’s Network node, or using the net view command. Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 and even Vista and XP create hidden administrative shares that administrators, programs, and services can use to manage the computer environment on the network. Continue reading

Jan 20 2017

Cannot publish topology changes. Conference directories still exist on a pool that would be deleted. Remove the conference directories before continuing.

skype-for-businessDuring migration to a new pool there was a need to remove old Front End servers from topology. After removing them from topology builder I received this error: “Cannot publish topology changes. Conference directories still exist on a pool that would be deleted. Remove the conference directories before continuing”. Quick look into the error showed that topology builder had a dependency on a conference service installed on one of the servers that wasn’t cleaned up properly. Continue reading

Jan 14 2017

Upgrading MySQL 5.1 to 5.7 service failed to start

mysql-logo-imageAfter MySQL upgrade from 5.1 to 5.7 on Centos 6.8 the mysqld service failed to start. In /var/log/mysqld.log I got the following:

2017-01-14 17:19:33 2175 [ERROR] InnoDB: auto-extending data file ./ibdata1 is of a different size 640 pages (rounded down to MB) than specified in the .cnf file: initial 768 pages, max 0 (relevant if non-zero) pages!
2017-01-14 17:19:33 2175 [ERROR] InnoDB: Could not open or create the system tablespace. If you tried to add new data files to the system tablespace, and it failed here, you should now edit innodb_data_file_path in my.cnf back to what it was, and remove the new ibdata files InnoDB created in this failed attempt. InnoDB only wrote those files full of zeros, but did not yet use them in any way. But be careful: do not remove old data files which contain your precious data!
2017-01-14 17:19:33 2175 [ERROR] Plugin ‘InnoDB’ init function returned error.
2017-01-14 17:19:33 2175 [ERROR] Plugin ‘InnoDB’ registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed.
2017-01-14 17:19:33 2175 [ERROR] Unknown/unsupported storage engine: InnoDB
2017-01-14 17:19:33 2175 [ERROR] Aborting

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Jan 10 2017

Skype for Business. Move Central Management Store

skype-for-businessThere is a need to move Central Management Server to a new pool as the existing one is going to be decommissioned. SQL Backend consists of two MSSQL 2014 Servers running in AlwaysOn Cluster. While running Move-CsManagementServer commandlet with –WhatIf key I got an error:

Cannot move Central Management Server. The new Central Management Store located at “AlwaysOnListener.domain.com” is not accessible.

Needless to say that listener’s FQDN is available as well as both SQL servers. Permissions is not the case as well as I run that command under user with RTCUniversalServerAdmins group membership. Continue reading

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